Please don't use LibAdwaita library

[medmedin2014]

Is Your Feature Request Related to a Problem?

LibAdwaita is meant for developing apps to run only on GNOME desktop, they forced that Adwaita theme, and it's difficult to change it on other non GNOME desktop. This app is used on multiple desktops like Plasma, XFCE... and any LibAdwaita app has serious problem to integrate with other native apps.
https://discuss.kde.org/t/any-plasma-hack-fix-to-libadwaita-look/2946

Feature Description

Please use pure GTK widgets and don't lock this great app into GNOME trap.

Alternative Solutions

No response

Additional Context

No response

[rolandlo]

That's definitely a discussion we should have now and discuss pros and cons.

Cons:

• LibAdwaita apps may look alien on Plasma and other non-Gnome desktops as they can hardly be themed in a way to fit the particular desktop
• LibAdwaita is not available on old Linux distros natively (which would force users of those distros to use the flatpak or snap package)

Pros:

• LibAdwaita helps tremendously in making apps adaptive, which simplifies running those apps on devices with different form factors (including Linux tablets, e-readers or smartphones)
• LibAdwaita widgets support various gestures out of the box, which would be time-consuming and error-prone to implement by hand
• It's much easier to style an app consistently using LibAdwaita than without it. In Xournal++ there are tons of inconsistencies in the UI style
• For users that are acquainted with LibAdwaita apps it's easier to learn to use another LibAdwaita app than a random Gtk app
• Although pure Gtk 4 apps are easier to theme in accordance with a non-Gnome desktop, the theming is untested by the developers and may break lots of stuff
• In future on Gnome desktops non-LibAdwaita apps may start looking alien as well...
• There is no way to create an app with Gtk that looks on all supported platforms (including Windows and MacOS) completely at home. We would have to separate the core logics of our app into a library and write different apps for different desktops to have native looking apps on all desktops (and unfortunately that's a ton of work).

So far I have read various comments which would love for Xournal++ to be redesigned as a LibAdwaita app and you're the first one arguing against it. What does the majority of users think?! Please comment below!

See #4561, #4339 and #2722 for related issues/discussions.

Personally I would strongly advocate for using LibAdwaita. It makes things a lot easier from the developer point of view. I love the looks of the modern Gnome desktop and think that even though LibAdwaita apps may look alien on non-Gnome desktops, it's better than to have a less consistent and less powerful app.